February 3, 2013

25 comments:

Statement from the victim's grandmother: "“He has problems. The boy has had problems ever since he was born,” said Ortencia Perez, describing her grandson as a “nervous” child who takes at least four different types of medication daily."

Nervous... before getting thrown off the 5-story building. Imagine living and going forward.

Seems like it's always the story that when a child is able to defy the odds arrayed against him by his environment, and becomes even just a decent kid, some asshole comes along and throws him off the roof or some other depredation.

Matthew Sablan said... I think this is a time I can get behind charging someone under 18 as an adult.

particularly since there doesn't seem to be any outside pressure that caused him to commit this crime. e.g. no friends egging some teen into a violent act. Looking at the article though, i wonder why they use 'arrests' instead of 'convictions'. Maybe he's a 'good kid' LOL, or maybe they should have convicted him of something before he got the idea he was immune to punishment.

Aska’s rap sheet includes arrests for robbery, assault and menacing, said law-enforcement sources.

But, we already have the power, that's how people get murdered. The question left for us is do we value innocent life enough to make those who steal it pay the appropriate price. We define the value of a thing by what we are willing to do to protect it.

There is injustice in being either too lenient or too tough. Justice requires the appropriate response. What is unlawfully taken from a murdered victim, and all their loved ones is so complete that a complete punishment is earned, and required of a people who truly value innocent life and justice.

I'll play devil's advocate here... we're assuming the article is accurate and Aska *dragged* the boy from his apartment and up to the roof and then threw him off.

I'd think that would be an important thing to prove, absolutely, that it wasn't a case of an obnoxious, clingy and highly medicated boy seeing an older teenager and following him to the roof and getting in his face and getting pushed. "Casmine threw me off the roof," is still true.

Because if there was a witness to the "dragging" then how did that work? Has the boy been lucid enough after naming who threw him off the roof to explain how that happened?

Second possibility (or third, or whatever) the older boy does "drag" him to the roof and threaten to throw him over in order to scare him, either because he's a sadistic monster or because the boy with problems won't leave him alone, and never intended to drop him.

I'm not saying that it's the kid's fault if he was being a pest, but there are scenarios where the teenager could be guilty of extremely bad judgement instead of attempted pre-meditated murder.